NASA Carbon Monitoring System Data Tutorials

NASA CMS

The Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) is directed through a 2010 Congressional Appropriation and is a forward-looking activity designed to develop a prototype carbon monitoring system based on scientific research towards characterizing, quantifying, understanding, and predicting the evolution of carbon sources and sinks from regional to global scales through improved quantification of carbon reservoirs and fluxes.

The CMS program funds basic and applied research that is created while engaging with a user community in a way that bridges carbon science and user communities to better serve societal needs. By connecting carbon cycle science research to stakeholders who use the data in their decision making, NASA CMS contributes to understanding and meeting the needs of the climate data user community.

There have been three phases of the CMS projects: CMS Phase I (2010-2012), CMS Phase II (2011-2016), and CMS Phase III (2018-2023). Learn more about NASA CMS program at https://carbon.nasa.gov/, and in the following reports [Hurtt and Kang, 2014, Hurtt et al., 2014, Hurtt et al., 2022]:

CMS Datasets

As of today, there are 182 CMS data products that are archived at different NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). In addition, there are 106 data products that are yet to be archived at a NASA DAAC.

NASA CMS Data Availability

• CMS data at ORNL DAAC

• CMS data at GES DISC

• CMS data at Earthdata search

Data Tutorials

These data tutorials will introduce how to search and discover CMS datasets and access and visualize the datasets using various data services and tools. The tutorials will also demonstrate how to integrate the CMS datasets with other NASA datasets such as GEDI and ICESat-2 lidar datasets.

Prerequisites

• Earthdata Login
• Python Modules
• Compute Environment
• GitHub Account

Search & Discovery

• Discover CMS Datasets

Data Access Methods

• Access CMS LiDAR data

Data Integration

• GEDI Aboveground Biomass
• ICESAT-2 ATL08 Canopy Height

Resources

• Other Resources

References

[1]

George Hurtt and Christine Kang. NASA Carbon Monitoring System: Phase 1 Report. NASA Carbon Monitoring System Science Team, pages 1–78, 2014. URL: https://carbon.nasa.gov/pdfs/CMS_Phase-1_Report_Final.pdf.

[2]

George Hurtt, Diane Wickland, Jucks Kenneth, and others. NASA Carbon Monitoring System: Prototype Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification. NASA Carbon Monitoring System Science Team, pages 1–37, 2014. URL: https://carbon.nasa.gov/pdfs/2014_CarbonMonitoringSystem_ProgressReport.pdf.

[3]

George C Hurtt, Arlyn Andrews, Kevin Bowman, and others. The NASA Carbon Monitoring System Phase 2 synthesis: scope, findings, gaps and recommended next steps. Environmental Research Letters, 17(6):063010, 2022. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac7407.